Category Archives: Banking Industry Group

Question: We learned that some of our employees may have been engaging in unethical, and perhaps even illegal, behavior. We don’t tolerate this, so we hired a law firm to conduct an investigation, and based on the results of that investigation, we terminated the employees. The terminated employees were high-profile employees, and we told some people why they were fired. Also, when we fired the employees, we briefly referenced the investigation, but didn’t provide them with any substantive information about it. Do you see any problems with that?

Question: Where can I find more information about the DOL’s doubling of the FLSA salary basis threshold? Did they make other changes? As an employer, what does this mean for me? And how long do I have to prepare?

Question: Our company uses agreements to try to protect our confidential and proprietary information. One of our former sales employees recently left us to work for a competing company. We have evidence he took with him our confidential information about our clients and is planning to use it to sell products to our clients for his new employer. When we reminded him he could not use our confidential information, he said we couldn’t stop him because the information does not qualify as a “trade secret” under our state’s trade secrets laws. We looked into the issue, and he’s probably right that this information is not necessarily a “trade secret”. We’re worried there’s nothing we can do to stop him from using our information to steal our clients. Help?

Question: Some of our retail company’s employees in California are demanding chairs to sit in while they work. Management thinks it appears unprofessional to have workers sitting, but I hear the employees might have a legal right to sit down. Should management take a stand?

Question: Our company uses non-compete and non-solicit agreements that bar former employees from having contact with any client of our company after they leave. One former employee who recently left is now claiming the agreement is invalid because it is “overly broad” in that it bars him from soliciting not only those clients of ours he used to work with, but clients he never had any dealings with. I can see his point, but at the same time, how are we supposed to know when he signs the agreement which of our clients he will end up working with?